Flowers Forever

Flowers in Art and Culture
February 3–August 27, 2023

About the
exhibition

February 3–August 27, 2023

With their splendor and diversity flowers have always captivated us. They possess great symbolic power – whether in mythology, religion, art or politics. In earlier centuries, flowers were coveted status symbols, today they are traded globally as a mass product. Currently, the flower is coming into focus as a fragile yet indispensable component of our global eco-system. With objects from art, design, fashion and natural science, Flowers Forever offers a fascinating, elaborately staged tour through the cultural history of flowers from antiquity to the present day.

The presentation comprises around one hundred and seventy works from international collections as well as installations created especially for the exhibition. Important examples from the histories of art and design enter into a fruitful dialog with new artistic approaches. The exhibition features works by Jan Brueghel the Younger, Abraham Mignon, Barbara Regina Dietzsch, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Hannah Höch, Andreas Gursky, Miguel Chevalier, Ann Carrington, Patricia Kaersenhout, Kehinde Wiley, DRIFT, and many other artists. They all bring the multifaceted cultural history of flowers to life in impressive ways.

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Venus Verticordia, 1864–1868
Oil on canvas, 81,3 x 68 cm
Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum

Kehinde Wiley
Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman III, 2019
Oil on canvas, 144 x 114 cm
Collection Vilsmeier – Linhares, Munich
© Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
The Roses of Heliogabalus, 1888
Oil on Canvas
132,7 x 214,4 cm
Colección Pérez Simón, Mexiko
© Studio Sébert Photographes

Jan Brueghel t. Y.
Satire of Tulipomania, 1640
Oil on panel, 31 x 49 cm
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, purchased with the support of the Rembrandt Society
Photo: Tom Haartsen

Abraham Mignon
Vase of Flower, ca. 1665
Oil on canvas, 87,7 x 68,3 cm
Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Photo: Studio Tromp

Kristian Zahrtmann
Adam in Paradise, 1914
Oil on canvas, 125 x 106 cm
Private collection
Photo: Den Hirschsprungske Samling

Unknown (Egypt)
Stele of Nena, c. 1300 B.C.
Limestone, 77 x 51 x 9 cm
Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Munich, ÄS 51, Photo: Roy Hessing

Ru Xiao Fan
Ode to meditation, Jingdezhen (Jiangxi province), 2012
Celadon porcelain, 35 x 38 x 38 cm
Loan of the artist
© Ru Xiao Fan, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022

Hannah Höch
Holland, 1942
Oil on canvas, 65,5 x 71,2 cm
On Loan from the Federal Republic of Germany – Contemporary Art Collection, Photo: Jürgen Seidel
© Hannah Höch, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022

Sir Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris
The Pilgrim in the Garden or The Heart of the Rose, design before 1896, production 1901
Wool, cotton warp, silk, 155 x 201 cm
Badisches Landesmuseum, Photo: Thomas Goldschmidt

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Venus Verticordia, 1864–1868
Oil on canvas, 81,3 x 68 cm
Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
The Roses of Heliogabalus, 1888
Oil on Canvas
132,7 x 214,4 cm
Colección Pérez Simón, Mexiko
© Studio Sébert Photographes

Jan Brueghel t. Y.
Satire of Tulipomania, 1640
Oil on panel, 31 x 49 cm
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, purchased with the support of the Rembrandt Society
Photo: Tom Haartsen

Abraham Mignon
Vase of Flower, ca. 1665
Oil on canvas, 87,7 x 68,3 cm
Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Photo: Studio Tromp

Kristian Zahrtmann
Adam in Paradise, 1914
Oil on canvas, 125 x 106 cm
Private collection
Photo: Den Hirschsprungske Samling

Audio Tour

A free audio tour (EN/DE) is available for the exhibition. It can be accessed from home and in the exhibition with your own mobile device. Please bring your own headphones when you visit the exhibition.

Start the Audio Tour

Program

Calender

Catalog

Flowers Forever (German edition)is the first exhibition catalog to deal with the art and cultural history of flowers from antiquity to the present day on this scale and in an interdisciplinary manner. Three large-scale interdisciplinary dialogues open inspiring and differentiated insights into the cultural history of flowers on the topics of flowers as symbol, flowers as motif, and flowers as commodity. Short texts also accompany selected objects to explain their context and relevance to the theme.

Sold out at the Kunsthalle

Edited by Roger Diederen and Franziska Stöhr. With contributions by Andreas Beyer, Michael John Gorman, Gudrun Kadereit, Isabel Kranz, Inger Leemans, Randy Malamud, Silke Peters, and D. Fairchild Ruggles.

288 pages, 24 x 29 cm, 275 color images, hardcover, available in German, published by Prestel Verlag.

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View into the exhibition

by BR Capriccio

Flower Power Festival
Munich 2023

Celebrating nature in the city

Based on the Flowers Forever exhibition at the Flower Power Festival Munich 2023 everything revolves around blossoms. After the nationally sensational Faust Festival 2018, this is the second major event in the Bavarian capital in which everyone can participate.

Science, sustainability, plant diversity, garden art, climate change, biodiversity, aesthetics, quality of life – these and many more are conceivable topics that will be staged, be it with exhibitions, workshops, walks, theatre performances, installations and more. Indoors, outdoors and digitally are the festival’s playgrounds.

The Kunsthalle München, the Gasteig, Europe’s largest cultural centre, the Munich-Nymphenburg Botanical Garden and the BIOTOPIA – Bavaria’s Natural History Museum are the impetus behind the festival. Many actors can identify with the themes of nature, culture, city and blossom, which describe the core idea of the festival. There are hardly any limits to creativity. Anyone and everyone can participate.

In addition to participation, inclusion will play an important role this time. The festival offers the chance to sensitise many people to the topic and at the same time to enable as many people as possible to participate in cultural life. Ideally, this could result in sustainable impulses that move something in our society in the long term.

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More about the festival

Program

All events available here.

Magazine

Interesting people and projects and a look behind the scenes.

The Munich Flower
Extravaganza

We needed over 100,000 dried flowers for a major installation by artist Rebecca Louise Law. Everyone was invited to collect flowers – whether purchased bouquets or flowers from their own gardens – and bring them dried to the Kunsthalle by fall 2022. In addition, many local volunteers helped us prepare the flowers for installation. To have enough space for this, a disused swimming pool in Munich was specially hijacked.